Riddling the Riddler
by spankingfemfatale
Summary: Batman is too busy to take on the Riddler, so Barbara Gordon takes on the challenge much to Edward's disdain. Batgirl is running out of time and takes matters into her own hands to help encourage the Riddler to concede. WARNING! Contains non-consensual spanking!


I've been a fan of the 90's Riddler since I was a young girl, so of course, he became the target of my fancies to correct an errant villain! :P This is a lovely treat written by my adoring husband! It's based off of dialogue I made up for a commission I had drawn for me by the lovely TimPhillips! (So two tasty treats for me! *swoon* =D) If you check my profile here, I have a link to my Archive of Our Own page, where the art is embedded within this story. I hope you enjoy both as much as I do!

Riddling a Riddler

Barbara leapt from building to building, enjoying the thrill of technologically aided parkour activity. The black suit that clung to her lithe form had the appearance of spandex but had a consistency closer to leather, occasionally creaking in the joints of her arms of legs so subtly that only she could hear it, but more than supple enough to allow her free range of motion.

Range she needed, giving the near gymnastic level of movement she demanded of her gear as she hopped from one building to the next. With a running jump, she used the concrete ramp of a chimney flute to gain some extra air, leaping to a building ten feet away from the one she was currently on, landing lightly and charging off to the next building without pause.

After doing this for a short while she stopped next to an advertisement for a local lawyer, whose false smile beamed down on Gotham, the words on the billboard ignored by Barbara as she ran a hand through a long lock of her auburn hair where it hung down just to the side of her stylized black face mask, which covered her eyes and the bridge of her nose. With even breaths she allowed her body to cool from her run. It wouldn't do to let her suit get all sweated up!

There wasn't actually anywhere to be at the moment, after all; she was just mixing some exercise into her nightly patrol of the streets below as she watched for signs of mugging, vandalism, or more serious acts of crime. Gotham was known as a crime capital, and while she often did not bump into trouble, just wandering the bad sides of town was sometimes enough to find someone doing something they shouldn't.

Not in this town, not since her hero Batman had appeared. Barbara glanced down to the yellow and black symbol on her chest, lightly running her fingers over the icon that represented both the sharp decline in crime that had since swept Gotham and the hope that Batman brought to the cities inhabitants.

As if summoned by her thoughts on it, a great swath of light suddenly peeled out into the night sky, painting that same symbol upon the dark clouds above the brightly lit city. Barbara blinked and then laughed lightly at the irony of it, thinking back to that fateful night when she had spied on her father Jim Gordon when he'd lit his special signal light one night a few years ago.

Jim wouldn't have liked to know she'd been eavesdropping on his secret rooftop conversation with Batman, but it had been easy to find out that everyone in the GCPD knew that Gordon not only lit a light atop the station to notify the vigilante of a need for assistance, but that he brazenly met with a man who worked outside of the law right there!

No one seemed to care, though; Batman got things done, and in a desperate city like Gotham, knowing someone so effective was out there reducing the number of bullets being slung at cops outweighed the moral dilemma. Seeing her dad speak so openly with the Batman inspired her in ways her father would never know, and in the years following that night, she had sought out ways to be just as effective herself!

It had been tricky; the more she studied Batman the more she realized that he had an almost superhuman set of skills and abilities that far outstripped the average person. Her investigations into procuring tech that rivalled what the Bat used were easy enough, but procuring the hardware secretly was a pain, not to mention ultra-expensive!

Early on she had decided that Batman either had very rich contacts or was himself fabulously rich to use half of the crazy gear he had been documented employing, which would also have explained how he managed to get so crazy strong and still have time to spend most of the night patrolling the streets. She extremely doubted that he had a day job!

She on the other hand was enrolled in college and had a part-time job, and could only spend a small portion of the night dedicated to crime fighting if she also wanted to meet a strenuous regime of training exercises. She would never have been able to afford her gear if not for fortuitously meeting some very bright people at her college in her quest for technological superiority over criminals.

Of course, shaking hands wasn't her only advantage; Barbara had only realized far after the fact during one of her rare conversations with the caped crusader. She had cut costs extremely on her gear by making versions of Batman's tech that were just as sturdy as his but using far cheaper or more common materials. She had blushed furiously when her idol had suggested that she was an innovative genius and outstripped many of his own devices, even asking if he could look at her tech!

Just remembering that caused her cheeks to pink a little under her mask at the remembered the praise, but she quickly set the feeling aside; she was her own woman now, no more living in the shadow of Batman! It had been hard; the physical regimen had been the hardest. She had an aptitude for martial arts, but being a young woman was a disadvantage too often against large opponents.

Still, with years of hard work, she had hardened the muscles of her toned body into the corded muscle it was now, and with the right training taught herself to overcome brute force with a wealth of agility and honed reflexes. She'd also learned to apply her considerable intellect to fights the way Batman would; having a plan won more fights than improvising ever could, and quick thinking kept her from getting cornered when a plan wasn't possible.

The signal light vanished from the sky; a sign that Commissioner Gordon had finished his meeting with Batman and that the vigilante was on his way to break up some criminal's aspirations. One of these days she was going to have to be bold enough to approach her father about having her own light made, but telling her dad now after the years of hiding her pastime as part-time hero was difficult to approach at best.

And there was no way that she could fool him into thinking she was someone else; she knew deep down he'd find out the moment he got up close and heard her speak. Jim Gordon wasn't a decorated detective for nothing, and she wasn't foolish enough to think that it would be wise to try to trick him further than she already has for a variety of reasons.

A small gasp escaped her as suddenly the Bat Signal flared into being once more. This was rare, but Batman couldn't be everywhere at once, and sometimes more than one major threat arose in Gotham simultaneously. But the police knew that Batman wasn't alone out there anymore, and Barbara smiled as she pulled a small device to her ear, listening to the police scanner; it was a good thing Batgirl was on the job!

Barbara landed lightly after squeezing through the very narrow window into the lit basement of the warehouse where the Riddler had set up yet another set of traps for Batman. The broadcast over the scanner had given the location as the answer to a riddle that the police had parsed together in an effort to rescue several hostages taken by the gimmicky criminal.

She sighed as she took in the small utility room she stood in, approaching the door warily as she unlocked the door from the inside and peeked into a narrow corridor beyond. Riddler usually broadcast his crimes subtly, but Batman had put him back in Arkham Asylum numerous times now, and clearly the man was beyond obsessed.

So much so that he'd literally put his crime out where everyone in the world could see it; on national television. Perhaps because in that broadcast he had set a time limit for the vigilante to beat his latest series of tests, lest he murder his prisoners. However given Barbara's assessment of his behavior in past cases and from reading his profile, she was almost certain it was mostly grandstanding.

With the time limit in place and Batman already involved in another important mission, Barbara had texted the police letting them know she was on the job and used her cable gun to zip line through the air space above the city to the warehouse in mere minutes. Deciding that she had no intention of using the front door she had scouted out the small basement window for entry.

Batman would never have been able to fit through that space, so she reasoned that she would most likely enter an area free of traps as the Riddler would have assumed he'd enter the front, and she was relieved to be proven right. She glanced left and right down the hall, using what she remembered of her brief glace of the warehouse blueprints on her patented Batgirl phone to decide a route that would lead deeper inside.

After checking a door at the end of the hall out and carefully opening it, Barbara found herself in a small room with a two doors leading out of it, likely a warehouse office adjoined to more offices. Three feminine shaped mannequins stood against the wall within, each with only one arm. At a glance, she noted that the two doors leading out and the one she had entered from had light bulbs set into the wall directly over them.

Currently the light over the door behind her shone green, while the other two were red. As her gaze swept the room she also noted a speaker set into one corner of the room, even as a camera set into another corner rotated to point at her, a small red light at its base verifying that it was recording. With practiced ease Barbara reached into one of the many pockets of her utility belt.

Hers had way more pockets than Batman's, due to the fact that she was constantly coming up with another device that could tip the balance in a fight, but she was wise enough to spend time familiarizing herself with what was in each pocket in a systemic fashion, until using those devices was muscle memory.

So it was that the camera had on barely pointed her way where she flicked her wrist, sending a small black disc whipping through the air like a miniature Frisbee. It seemed to miss the camera by a few inches at first, but before it could hit the wall beside it, the device suddenly rerouted and slammed against the camera's metal frame with a heavy metallic sound.

The magnet within served to do more than attract the disc to the camera though, as the red light on the machine winked off, the device's small electro-magnetic field disrupting the camera's operation. A smug voice immediately sounded over the speaker mounted in the other corner, "Little girl, you should run home; you have no business standing on the shoulders of giants. You will find only death here…"

Barbara raised an eyebrow, only glancing at the speaker a moment before moving in front of the wall with the mannequins. Edward Nygma was known for his arrogance and megalomania, traits defined in his profile as the reasons for why he has been so insistent on always dropping clues for Batman whenever he committed a crime.

He was smugly superior in what he believed to be his own greater intellectual capacity, and the shrinks back at Arkham had diagnosed that his derangements disallowed him from recognizing that the traits kept getting him caught, or perhaps even from recognizing his own failures. But Barbara suspected that there was more to it than that; Riddler seemed to get more desperate and more fixated on Batman each time, like he was trying to prove himself better, which hinted that on some level at least he knew he'd been proven wrong.

At the very least he respected Batman as being a worthy opponent; a sentiment he clearly did not extend to her. Her brow drew down in annoyance as she took in writing that had been painted on the wall behind the mannequins in shades of red, blue and yellow. He had no reason to think she couldn't best him; he knew nothing of Batgirl!

Her frown turned into a small smile as his flustered voice filled the air again on the heels of his last statement, "H-hey! You cheated! You're not supposed to be that far in… you crept through the basement window like some vile worm, didn't you? You deserve the fate you earn yourself for so flagrantly violating the spirit of the game! So knock yourself out; I'm sure it'll be a gas!"

Barbara's eyes grew serious again as she listened to his words, returning her attention fully to the words on the wall as well, reading them aloud to herself, "Sally, Lisa, and Bernadette are triplets and all birds of a feather, but only two of them share the way to the door." Frowning again in concentration, Barbara glanced at the mannequins, taking in the blue, red, and yellow dresses that they wore, as well as the wide-brimmed straw hats they wore, each adorned with a single feather.

They all had feathers, but those items were all of the same color, suggesting that maybe the colors were the key to finding which two mannequins shared something. But that didn't make any sense; those three colors were all very different, and Barbara couldn't see how birds might affect this riddle. Then it dawned on her and she smiled.

Those three colors were the most basic prime colors, and each girl had only one feather. The riddle was clearly designed to seem complicated and cause Batman to overthink it and draw a false conclusion, when the answer was actually just the simple fact that Sally and Lisa both shared the letter 'L' in their names.

Glancing at the wall's mismatched colors of painted writing, Barbara approached the mannequin's whose dresses' colors matched the color of their names, and lifted their solitary arms forward. With a double click and a muffled mechanical beep, the lights above both of the other doors turned green. As she moved to the door the hands pointed at Barbara reached into her belt, pulling out a small breather mask.

After placing the mask firmly over the bottom half of her face, she opened the door and walked into the passage beyond, unsurprised when the door behind her locked automatically. A red light above the door ahead of her at the end of the hallway confirmed the trap she'd walked into as vents set into the walls near the roof leaked gas into the room with an audible hissing sound.

Barbara rolled her eyes as she walked up to the other door, simply waiting until the gas dissipated and the light above it turned green again to open it and proceed forwards. If Nygma simply set traps up to capture or kill Batman without warning about them I the form of riddles, he might actually be dangerous instead of just annoying!

Her eyes rapidly sought out the camera in this next room, another disc flying out to neutralize it as it set its gaze on her even as she walked up to another message, this one scrawled in black print at the base of a statue of Buddha, which was flanked by two doors to the side and behind it. She read it as Nygma's voice played over another speaker, "You've made it farther than I thought you would, whelp, but you should realize how lowly you are and stop while you're ahead."

There was a snarl of slight irritation accompanying the usual mocking tone this time; Nygma was clearly offended that she had solved one of his puzzles! As fun as that was though Barbara focused on the message, ignoring Eddie while she read it aloud, "What can he hold in his right hand that he cannot hold in his left?"

She glanced around the room, noting that as she had thought, there was nothing else in the room but the statue. So nothing to put in the statue's hands… maybe the Buddha had something to do with it? She looked the bronze statue over carefully but saw no detail that stood out as a lever or mechanism, and she was fairly certain that religion was not involved.

Superstition might place the left side as a bad omen, but Barbara smiled once more as the answer came to her, and opened the left hand door. You can't hold your left hand in your left hand, after all. Narrowing her eyes into yet another hallway beyond, she stopped at the threshold as she considered Nygma's last words.

Barbara crouched down then and walked carefully along the floor, hoping she'd guessed right. As she did so, she was proven correct in her assessment, as nearing the walls to her left and right revealed tiny holes just above her within the wall that she guessed were lightly lasers set to detect movement. She wasn't sure what mechanism was set to go off if she triggered them, but she assumed it likely was something designed to behead a person.

She stayed low ever as she opened the door out, only rising once she was fully into the next room. With skill that was rapidly becoming honed by this little challenge, Barbara's sharp eyes detected the next camera and her slender hand whipped another disk into it before it could even turn to face her this time.

"It doesn't matter if I can't see you, girl!" Nygma's voice blared loudly from yet another speaker, "Every second you dally here, you go right on wasting what time I have left to test myself against a real opponent! Choose your retort carefully in this room, upstart."

Barbara sighed then, shaking her head; did this guy literally place a speaker and camera in every room? Was he that keyed up on seeing Batman's face as he gloated? She dismissed this thought for the moment, though, focusing on the more important task of breaching the next room. This place was large, she had seen that from the blueprints, and she didn't want to risk running the clock down on those hostages focusing on Edward's antics.

In the center of the room was a tall metal stand with an old-fashioned microphone attached to it. Rather obvious traps were set into the walls of the room, making Barbara tense up as she stalked into the center towards the mic. Scrawled on the opposite wall above the only door leading out just above its red-glowing light, were the words 'If you tell a lie you burn. If you tell the truth you bleed.'

Barbara took a moment to squint her eyes at the recesses, holes and machinery lining the walls to her left and right and the roof above her. Yup, those looked like ports that could easily contain flamethrowers and gun nozzles. So either she's torched or shot, eh? She took all of a moment to think on the words ahead of her, blinking.

Then she reached forward, taking the mic in hand, "I'll be burned." She wasn't sure, but a faint hiss might have played through the speaker in the corner just then, perhaps betraying Nygma's annoyance before he realized he had left the speaker open, because it seemed to vanish as abruptly as it started. With another beep the light over the door ahead turned green, accompanied by the sound of its lock sliding open.

As expected, another hallway opened beyond, and Barbara frowned; did Nygma add a bunch of walls to this warehouse just to create this un-fun little maze of his? She didn't recall the last two rooms from the blueprints, but she hadn't studied it well enough to be certain, suddenly wishing she hadn't rushed so hard to get in. She'd let Riddler set the pace with that, and now her Batphone had no signal.

She would just have to hope that the architecture veered back into what she needed soon, or she was going to have to dance through this entire thing on wits alone, which was not preferable. She frowned, unsure this time of what Nygma's last clue might have been, and, assuming that there might be more sensors in the walls, she reached into her belt for a small spray bottle.

Giving the bottle a small shake she pointed it into the hall and sprayed a thin sheen of mist into it. Seemingly everywhere the liquid from the bottle went red lines of light popped into existence in the air, moving rapidly up, down, and side to side in a chaotic rhythm. Her eyes widened; she had gotten pretty athletic, but there was no way she was going to get through that just on reflex!

Her mouth became a line of thought as she watched the haphazard lasers as they danced back and forth along the walls. Maybe they weren't as random as they at first seemed. This whole warehouse seemed to have a theme to it, as if Nygma just couldn't help himself to make connections between everything that he did.

Every puzzle here had to do with direction, typically right and left. Her eyes widened again as it clicked, and she waited until the lasers moved into the right position again before taking a step into the right side of the room, then pausing before moving at angle to the left, then stopping and moving to the right again, all the while chanting to herself, "Dally… right… left…"

As expected, her movements had to be spaced exactly one second apart, just as Nygma had hinted they would, making her crossing of the hall a stressful exercise. Once through the other door she let out a sigh of relief even as she rapidly scanned and then dealt with another camera. It was quite far from her, as this room was much more spacious that the previous rooms she had encountered.

But all of that time practicing throwing batarangs paid off, as she hit the far away camera unerringly despite the distance. Nygma began to rant from the loudspeakers of this room but Barbara wasn't really listening to him this time; she had finally found what she was looking for. Set high on the wall near the roof was a small grate.

With dexterous fingers she quickly unscrewed the grate and set it aside, climbing up and squeezing her compact frame into the air conditioning vents that supplied the entire warehouse with cool air for its office areas. She crawled along it, mindful not to make too much noise as she shuffled along but also aware that time was of the essence.

If too much time passed Nygma would realize she might not be in that last puzzle room. With any luck, he'll think he's stumped her long enough to get the drop on him. Due to him noticing that she had bypassed a lot of his traps by squeezing before, it wouldn't be too much of a leap for him to realize she was pulling a similar trick now.

As she moved along the length of the metal tunnel, her eyes flitted over the side, watching as the offices passed her by one at a time through the grates in each of them, until eventually the vent travelled up at a slant, and she grunted with strained as she hauled herself the steep incline towards the main storage room of the building.

She had no view of anything for a while as she traveled along in complete darkness, and then as the vent started to level out again she was able to finally see the storage area through the evenly distributed vents along the tunnel she occupied. Large crates, forklift's and shelving units dominated most of the area, but towards the back loomed a large framework that suggested it was a replica of the Statue of Liberty, at least, from the waist up anyways.

Taking in the other props and moldings scattered around its base Barbara had to guess that this was some kind of storage shed for an art studio, or maybe a film studio's prop set. Glancing past the replica she confirmed her suspicions; above and slightly to the left of Lady Liberty was an elevated office that was usually only accessible by the tall set of stairs that lead up to it from the warehouse floor far below.

Barbara didn't intend to take the stairs, though; why would she, when that office shared the same vent she was crawling through? It took a while, but as she silently padded her palms and knees along the length of the metal tunnel, she was eventually rewarded with a view of Edward Nygma himself. He sat in a wheeled chair glaring at a bank of computer screens.

His fists were balled on the counter before him and he leaned forward in an anxious way; clearly blinding him to what she had been doing was taking its toll on the control freak below, evidenced by his litany of irritable grumbling, "Stupid brat! How dare she stroll in here and ruin everything like this! This game was not meant for impudent little…"

With a loud clatter Barbara kicked the grate out from in front of her, but stealth wasn't really necessary anymore, as she whipped her body fluidly out of the vent above Nygma and landed upon him before he do more than cry out in dismay. He tried desperately to lunge for a button on the panel behind him, but Barbara was much faster, swinging his own weight against him and pinning him to the chair he'd just been sitting in.

She placed one knee into his back as she twisted and levered his arm painfully, letting him see in the space of a second that further attempts to resist would only cause pain or maybe even dislocate his own shoulder. He shouted in a manner that started angry then rose into alarm as she did so, his eyes wide in the wake of a sudden and crushing defeat.

Batgirl's gloved fists sunk into the collar at the back of Riddler's head, dragging him into an awkward and painful position as she interrogated him, "I know you have goons here that you just tried to call for. Where are they, and where are the hostages?"

Nygma grunted, struggling for only a moment before it became clear that doing so only caused more pain in his joints, "You think I'm afraid of you?! I'm not about to bow to you, when you couldn't even play the game properly, you…!"

Barbara's eyes narrowed as he spoke, realizing that she had once more crashed into one of the biggest problems that existed in her line of work; intimidation. Batman wielded his shadow as a cloak of fear to terrify those he subdued, and he often didn't have to actually resort to violence to get criminals to talk. Barbara, however, was still a petite woman regardless of the symbol she wore.

She has certainly terrified plenty of criminals with her own array of prowess, but the sad fact was that most people were more afraid of bulk and tended to think a girl wasn't capable of hurting them for not talking. This had gotten her into trouble at first, but after a firm lecture from her mentor on using violence as a last resort, she had widely avoided using intimidation.

Except now she had to. Either Nygma speaks now or she runs out of time and his men shoot the hostages. By her estimation she still had more than a half hour, but what could she do with that other than act all crazy bitch and hope he didn't call her bluff or actually start hurting him? As she quietly held him Edward continued to lob insults against her intelligence that she ignored as she focused on the problem before her.

Her half-lidded eyes regarded him from a state of relaxed concentration as he flailed energetically and ranted. Then an idea came to mind, remembering something that he had said before she's jumped out of the vent. With controlled precision she used techniques honed through encounters with many unsavory types to move Nymga up and off of the chair as she spun around him, sitting into the chair herself as she tripped him up and simultaneously drug him down over her lap.

Honestly, she didn't need such flawless execution of her martial prowess; she could feel in the feeble resistance that Nygma gave her that he was just as weak as she had supposed he was. She could have 'manhandled' him if she wanted, as it became clear that she was vastly stronger than him, despite being a little shorter and slightly less broad in the shoulder.

Which played perfectly into her next move. If Nygma had been a big, strong guy this would never have worked, but his diminutive frame and undeveloped musculature allowed her a unique opportunity. He grunted as his stomach slammed into one arm of the chair, as she roped an arm firmly around his waist, pinning him to it.

With his upper body trapped that way, she snaked a toned thigh over his legs just above the knees, caging his lap into hers so that he could not escape. With her right hand now free, she reached down and snatched a hold of his gray pants, hauling them down to reveal the pale skin of his ass beneath and eliciting a gasp from Nygma, "W-what are you doing?!"

He leaned his face back over his own shoulder to look at her, his eyes widened in fear that she could easily see even through the silly ineffectual masquerade mask he work over the top half of his features. She locked eyes with him and gave him a wide smile that she knew would look unnerving in a situation like this one and stated simply, "I think it's time we establish who the brat really is between us."

Grabbing the fingers of her right hand glove with her teeth, Barbara pulled each one free until she could remove the garment as Nygma clearly caught on to what she planned and raged futilely against her firm grip, a steady horror of what she intended rising in him as the glove slipped free and she reared her hand back to swat him hard across his naked backside.

He continued for a few moments more to resist as mightily as he could, as her hand flashed down with strength that clearly surprised Nygma, striking him repeatedly I a pattern that gave him no quarter for rest as he squirmed and flailed within her grasp. Eddie was a fairly smart guy, and as Barbara had hope, a man of low pain threshold.

Within the space of less than a minute his angry cries were displaced by more desperate, worried shouts, as his face betrayed how much what she was doing to him stung. A man like him, Barbara had to wonder if mommy or daddy have ever laid a hand on him; it would make perfect sense if he had been pampered into that lack of accountability he had!

This was certainly a long shot, but one that seemed to be working, as growing panic became clear on Edward's face, bringing a small smile to Barbara's features as her plan slowly rolled to fruition. "Tell me where your goons are, Nygma. Otherwise it's going to feel like a very long wait for the police to punch through your maze…"

"What? N-no!" His eyes widened further as he seemed to realize that no one was going to be coming up there to save him. Barbara nodded to herself, confirming in his reaction that the hostages and his flunkies weren't even in the building.

She gave him a stern look, "I can do this all night, Nygma, and no one is going to hear you scream like a baby while I spank you!"

Involuntary shudders ran through him at the terrible damage her insults were delivering to his inflated ego, his fear of the consequences of his failure blossoming on his face. One way or the other he was going back to Arkham, but if his men killed the hostages, he'd get more murder charges and be sedated into oblivion for the rest of his life!

Batman had always stopped Nygma's schemes before he had actually hurt anyone, but if this girl held him here and Batman didn't come… "Y-you're bluffing! You're going to have to release me to go save the hostages…" he did his best to erect a false wall of confidence, smiling at her smugly, "You are no killer!"

Barbara drew her brow down, wondering if she should play up the crazy bitch routine, but ultimately she got the feeling that wouldn't be needed, "Alright Nygma; you got me. I won't let those hostages die." Eddie cried out sharply as her hand started to descend much faster and harder than it had before, punctuating her next words clearly.

"So I'm just going to tan your smarmy little ass until you tell me what I want to know. By my estimation we have about twenty eight minutes until your deadline runs out… can you endure this that long?"

Barbara smiled as that thought seemed to sink in with Nygma, as his eyes gradually widened further and further until they seemed to bulge. She had been punished him less than a couple of minutes and he was already flailing widely, his eyes stinging, on the verge of tears from the incredible sting of her descending hand!

He couldn't possibly last that terrible length of time if she continued as she was throughout, he thought. His stomach clenched with sick apprehension and his throat constricted in abject fear of his rapidly dwindling list of terrible options. He gulped, blinking as he slowly lowered his head a bit with his face set in a frown as he started to count seconds almost against his will.

Nygma had no choice but to ride it out, clearly. All he had to do was resist the urge to tell her what she wanted until she left and not only would he escape her clutches, but he would avoid humiliating himself to a miserable extent by submitting to a common spanking! However, as he lay there squirming against her, that option started to seem impossible.

His will was wavering with each swat of her hand; Eddie had never felt pain like this before, and had never imagined being subjected to its like! His cheeks burned like fire and each down stroke of her hand only added to that terrible inferno of sweltering heat and stinging pain that his posterior had become! This stripping of his resolve was occurring at a pace dictated by seconds, not minutes!

He had begun to tremble and shake, his face reddening as perspiration beaded upon his forehead under his bowler cap. His teeth ground together under the strain of her ministrations, his feet kicking pointlessly under her thigh as he grunted out his pain, hissing when she gave him a swat that caught a part of his ass that had become especially tender, along the underside.

Less than a minute! He had still barely managed to count out less than additional minute since she told him the goal he needed to reach, and as he considered what twenty or more minutes like it would feel like Eddie's resolve broke as he began to cry out in pain with each of her swats, sounds that didn't exactly inspire confidence escaping his own lips as she struck him.

Worse, the flood gates of his eyes seemed to rupture upon his knowing that he was about to submit to the young girl whom had ruined everything! Thick tears beaded down his face and dripped from his chin as a shuddering sob escaped his traitorous throat, "F-fine! I'll tell you everything! J-just let me go!"

He rushed out the words needed to explain the location of both his cohorts and the people they had taken, as well as their numbers. He winced as Barbara frowned at him, "Huh. That was way easier than I thought it would be. You cave pretty quickly don't you?"

Nygma looked away as her hand finally stopped its descent, letting out a shuddering sigh of relief, but when she didn't rise to let him up immediately he glanced back worriedly, noting that she had taken out a phone and was punched at its keys onehanded. She glanced at him as she typed, "I seem to have reception here, so I'm letting the cops know where to get our people and yours while I finish up here with you."

"F-finish?" Nygma's eyes bulged all over again as she put the phone aside and began spanking him again, her hand whipping against him just as hard as it had before she'd stopped. "N-no! That's not right! You said that you would stop if I told you!"

Barbara gave him a playful smirk, "And I did! Now I'm starting again, because you created a death trap here that could have hurt someone, because you threatened a bunch of people, and because you, Eddie, are a spoiled brat who needs to learn a lesson in addition to losing."

Nygma let out a furious cry as angst and fear mixed in equal amounts at first, but the anger was quickly submerged beneath the waves of his rising panic and the terrible pain that she elicited by striking him after his tortured cheeks had only had but a few moments to rest. "You weren't supposed to be here; it was supposed to be Batman!"

He slammed his green gloved hands against the back of the chair as he screamed, "The game wasn't meant for you! This isn't fair… and you, y-you cheated!"

Batgirl shook her head at him as he looked back at her tearfully, "Batman's too busy fighting crime and otherwise doing things more important than your silly games, Nygma. You're stuck with me now. Since you're so fond of riddles, why don't I give you one? What's red now but black and blue later?"

His eyes followed her gaze then to his own welted, reddened ass-flesh, and she continued "Don't answer just yet; it'll be more than clear when I'm done here with you."

Her eyes narrowed mischievously as she shot him a sidelong glance, watching as Eddie's eyes widened in horror as he croaked out a fearful objection, and then she stuck her tongue out of one corner of her mouth, her face squinting in concentration as she poured everything she had into giving the wayward Riddler everything he deserved as he thrashed helplessly in her lap.

Barbara watched as Edward Nygma was escorted into the back of a police car. She had cuffed him, and Eddie had been only too ready to tell her how to navigate safely out of the warehouse with her pushing him in front of her into each room. He had cried all the way until she'd handed him to the police waiting outside; it was kind of sad, really.

As she crouched low and thought on how remorseful Nygma had seemed before he had literally and pathetically fell unconscious across her knees from the spanking she gave him, she couldn't help but wonder what was going to happen next to him back at Arkham. Barbara had crossed paths with plenty of the bug guy's enemies, but this one was… different.

It almost felt like if maybe Batman didn't treat Nygma like all of the other goons he dealt with, punching his lights out and handing him back to the cops, that he might actually get through to him or something. She frowned as her mind kept looping over Eddie's fixation with Batman and wondering why it was he felt that way.

Did the suits back at Arkham have him pinned right, or was there something below their broad labels that everyone was missing? If this little adventure had proven anything, it was that Edward Nygma was actually pretty clever, even if obsessive compulsive. He could have easily tricked the docs back at the Asylum.

Regardless of what the case might be, Barbara decided then that she would have to keep an eye on Nygma. Maybe this riddle was more than it seemed.

The End?


End file.
